Accustomed to the Dark
At this time of year, as the Winter Solstice approaches and night comes sooner for us than before, we in North America are obliged to “grow accustomed to the Dark” in the words of Emily [...]
Best of the Best: Meet the Virtuosos of the Oil Painters of America
“Virtuosos of the OPA (Oil Painters of America)” has long been one of the most prestigious art competitions for traditional representational art in America. Leading OPA member Daniel Keys judged this year’s top painters. Daniel [...]
Beating Imposter Syndrome
It’s one of the most poisonous enemies artists at level face over and over again – Imposter Syndrome: the feeling that you're a total fraud and it's just a matter of time before you're found [...]
Brighten Up!
Better a bright painting than a dull one, yes? Who doesn’t like a painting full of light and vitality (although don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for somber and melancholy work too, I hasten [...]
Living the Wild Life
The work of wildlfie painter Hayley Johnson was recently the subject of a one-person show at New Hampshire’s Rochester Museum of Art. The paintings in “Anchors in Memory,” were large, colorful stylizations of critters including foxes, [...]
Announcing the Winners of the October PleinAir Salon Art Competition
Announcing the Winners of the October PleinAir Salon Art Competition Elaine Adams, Director of American Legacy Fine Arts has revealed her selections for the October 2025 PleinAir Salon Awards. Each of the 22 winners are [...]
Letting Color Lead
There are many ways to start a painting, and some of them double as creative prompts, not just to get the brush moving but to get the imagination revved and running. For Northern Irish pastel [...]
An Aside: We Visit the Contemporary Art World
Outbid at auction for Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million 2019 work, titled “Comedian,” which consisted of a banana duct-taped to a wall? Then can I interest you in a $12 million work by the same artist, [...]
How to Paint Loose
Howard Friedland, “Virgina Falls Revisited” (detail). Friedland, whose method is not that different from Charles Hawthorne’s vibrant "spots of color" approach, has a video on painting waterfalls. "Swing a bigger brush - you don't know what [...]
Compose Yourself!
In 1883 Winslow Homer moved to the small coastal village of Prouts Neck, Maine, where he created a series of paintings of the sea unparalleled in American art, says the Art Institute of Chicago, which [...]